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Summary

This is a report on NHS-funded maternity services in England for April 2015. This is the first release from the new Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS) and will be published on a monthly basis.

The MSDS is a patient-level data set that captures key information at each stage of the maternity service care pathway in NHS-funded maternity services, such as those maternity services provided by GP practices and hospitals. The data collected includes mother's demographics, booking appointments, admissions and re-admissions, screening tests, labour and delivery along with baby's demographics, diagnoses and screening tests.

The MSDS has been developed to help achieve better outcomes of care for mothers, babies and children. As a 'secondary uses' data set, it re-uses clinical and operational data for purposes other than direct patient care, such as commissioning, clinical audit, research, service planning and performance management at both local and national level. It will provide comparative, mother and child-centric data that will be used to improve clinical quality and service efficiency, and to commission services in a way that improves health and reduces inequalities.

These statistics are classified as experimental and should be used with caution. Experimental statistics are new official statistics undergoing evaluation. They are published in order to involve users and stakeholders in their development and as a means to build in quality at an early stage. More information about experimental statistics can be found on the UK Statistics Authority website.

Key Facts

This report contains key information based on the submissions that have been made by providers and will focus on data relating to activity that occurred in April 2015.

For April 2015 data, 76 providers successfully submitted data for the MSDS. This compares with 141 providers submitting data in HES. We are working closely with providers who did not respond and expect coverage and data quality to increase over time.

The average age of a woman attending a booking appointment was 29.3 years. The average age varied by commissioning region from 28.7 years in the North of England Commissioning Region to 30.5 years in the London Commissioning Region.

Women under the age of 20 accounted for 4.5 per cent of all pregnancies. The highest proportion of these pregnancies occurred in the North of England Commissioning Region, where 5.3 per cent of women were under the age of 20.

The percentage of women attending antenatal appointments with a recorded height and weight that were obese (with a Body Mass Index (BMI) over 30) was 19 per cent. Those who were underweight (BMI less than 18.5), accounted for 9 per cent of all women attending booking appointments.

At the time of their booking appointment, 12 per cent of women with a recorded smoking status were smokers, and 77 per cent were non-smokers.

The percentage of women with a recorded number of previous births and caesarean sections that had not given birth before was 46 per cent. Women who had given birth before, but had never had a caesarean section accounted for 42 per cent of all the women attending booking appointments. The percentage of women that had had at least one previous caesarean section was 12 per cent.